The Growth of the Follón

Mornings begin when I open my cel and begin to read the news, mostly these days from El País in Spanish. In English, the New York Times, and the Guardian. 

While the technology has changed, from newsprint to laptop to cel, the habit has stayed the same. Indeed it is one I inherited from my father. He would sit at the breakfast table with the morning paper open in front of him.

To be honest, I do miss going looking for the big fat Sunday Times and spending a good part of the day and then the week reading it. 

Criticisms of the news are also par for the course. One learns to read multiple sources and look for patterns and what is more or less trustworthy and verifiable. 

Of course, all this is a small part of my reading, but a key one. 

Spain has a rich tradition of journalism and for years I have read El País, although not daily, unlike now. I have loved they way it supports writers such as Vargas Llosa whose conservatism came increasingly to trouble me.  

Now, of course, V. LL. would seem quaint in the face of the bombastic and mendacious ultra right propaganda that increasingly dominates air waves as well as print media.

That is not yet the case in Spain where there is still a strong culture of print journalism. 

Yet, you could wonder how would I really know since I only watch TV when in a café where it is on. I miss out on this important site where opinion is manufactured and played out. I also miss out because I do not watch the right influencers nor spend much time on news Tik Tok or Instagram. 

Evidently, according to El País, I am really missing an important phenomenon in which the ultra right interests are strongly invested.

I read a few articles about a handsome youth and right wing trouble maker, Vito Quiles, native of near-by Elche, Italian Father and Spanish mother. 

He could just be one of the seemingly infinite number of attractive faces, bodies, and provocative personalities that trouble the waves around us and appear whenever we turn on out machines. 

However, Quiles is becoming more and more celebrated by Spanish media as a provocative voice of the Ultras with all the hormonal passion of an undereducated  young man. 

Though more handsome, he is reminiscent of the recently martyred man of the eternally boyish name, Charlie Kirk. In fact, El Pais mentioned them both in an article where it claimed Quiles, despite trying to upend college campuses, does not have the talent of St. Kirk.

But he is the young male face of the ultra right which is increasingly gaining force among college age males. 

Like Kirk, it appears he is dependent on the sponsorship of older, wealthy men. El País also noted that the Ultra leader, Santiago Abascal, through his foundation,  spends an ungodly amount of money supporting right wing media. He hopes, following the model of the US, that right wing media will open the door for the growth and support Abascal and his party Vox's inflammatory arguments.   

In this is something key, a vicious circle of citation in which external facts play little to no role. Instead the currency is support for its politicians and ability to agitate the public. The keystone of this edifice is a web site, “La Gaceta de la Iberosfera”, which trolls for voices and ideas that would support Santiago Abascal, the head of VOX in his and other partisan's arguments. 

Abascal then cites the Gaceta in his speeches and arguments which then quotes him. El País notes that much information on the recent focus on immigration, particularly from Africa—north and Sub Saharan, is false and never corrected. 

I respect journalists who, despite having a stance, actually go into the world and gather information. I suppose phone calls or emails are a legitimate substitute at a time of limited resources and enormous pressures on their day. But the do not replace in my mind getting out into the streets to see and to interview.

This does not include helicopter journalism. dropping from the air for a few camera shots and sound bites before being beamed up again to go somewhere else. It should mean spending time weighing and living the story they propose to report. 

Sigh, helicopters and emails are for more popular, especially if they give verisimilitude to what the journalist already thinks or what his or her employers already know. 

I love to see journalism that respects the task of the reporter to gather and verify information, especially when it runs counter to established ideas. And, I love thinkers with the depth of Vargas Llosa, even if I came to dislike his liberalism no matter how well he established it and argued for it.

His bias came to seem to me not unlike the passion the character Fonchito felt for his step mother in one of Vargas Llosa’s novels, Elogio de la Madrastra, in Praise of the Step mother. 

In reading authors like Vargas Llosa or like the many writers for El Pais, The New York Times, and the Guardian, you learn the back-feelings of thinkers and actors of your day. 

And through the reading, you can also learn much about the day’s events and challenges. 

You also learn language. While reading about Vito Quiles in El País I learned a new and useful word, follonero, he who makes follones. A follón is a mess and follower is, for me, the translation of the English trouble maker.

Somehow follonero seems to me less serious than the English troublemaker, kind of like Quiles with his youthful looks and actions.

It makes the Ultras seem playful, while in the US they seem deadly serious and painful, a plane dropping shit on the public. In both cases, they stink. 

 

 

A Bus to Romania

The day is speeding away, ever faster. On average each is colder. Winter stalks us. 

A rather handsome man, in good shape, with only one tooth in his smile sits on folded cardboard outside, in front of the Supermarket’s sliding door, an empty cup in his hand and the trained ability to quickly turn from smile to suffering in his eyes. 

This morning, when I went to buy food to make for lunch, he was surrounded by men in yellow and green vests and I worried something was up. 

Why should I worry?  Well, I have been speaking with him there and on the street corner now for months. Besides his normal plea for food—not money, he has shared a whole range of expressions, a positive encyclopedia of experiences and looks. He has told me about his six children, of course. He uses them as justification for begging when his person is not sufficient motivation. 

After a while though, I have come to believe him.  

My neighbor from two floors down came up to me. “David, I saw you talking to a Romanian. You have got to be careful. Do not believe anything they say. They just want to get money from you and even if they have to steal it.” 

I thanked him for his advice. He is after all, a good and big-hearted man. But after weighing his advice against what I have learned about this man, more than facts, bits and pieces of his life and soul, I decided to set it aside. I continued to talk to the man in front of the store, let’s call him Alex. 

Most days, when I go into the store, I say hello and ask him what he needs since he says it is for his children and that he does not have papers to live here and so cannot work. True and not true. With out papers you work a la negra, in the black market of jobs and labor. You are badly paid and people can take advantage of you. 

Alex prefers to beg. I think that is a harder task, to be honest with you. 

A man from Colombia I know in his early fifties, let us call him Luís, arrived without papers and found he could not legally reside anywhere and could not find a way to get papers for a job without an address, a local phone number, and someone to sponsor him with the city government in order to register him at an address, what they call empadronamiento. 

Every day, Luís walked the streets looking for opportunities and odd jobs. He found low paying occasional work that allowed him to pay rent and eat, but did not allow him to send money to his elderly mother nor for his youngest son who were dependent on him. They almost did not make it. 

One day, Luís lucked out. A local company needed laborers. They took him on sub rosa, liked him, and then decided to sponsor him. He now works legally.     

The process is very difficult and many do not make it, though many, like Luís, do. I do not know all of Alex’ history nor his ethnic and social background. 

He says he is from Romania, as my neighbor intuited. But my neighbor meant gypsy—he was being polite—and not every Romanian is gypsy. That is to say, Alex is not a light skinned, Romanian Romanian, but a dark skinned gypsy one, what people outside those circles often call Roma, to avoid the stigma of gypsy. 

In Spain gitano, the Spanish word for gypsy, is not a bad word. It is the normal one. I fact, the provincial government publishes numbers on how many gitanos reside in Alicante, the city and the province as does the Foundation of the Gypsy Secretariat. The Foundation uses in Spanish the word Roma while the government just uses gitano. Alicante Province has one of the largest numbers of Roma in Spain with more than 60,000. Alicante city has around 9,000 people.

I suspect that Romanian Roma do not integrate easily into Spanish Roma communities. Their language and customs and, maybe tribal belonging, are different. 

Back to Alex. I went up to him when the men in vests left, nervous for what might have happened. He greeted me with a wide and warm smile on his face, a cup of warm coffee in his hand and a half eaten pastry to his side. They had come to check on him. 

Alex had told me two days ago, on the street corner, that he was returning to his country. He has to go back. He can’t make it work here.  When I saw him today he said he cannot take his children with him. He barely has enough money for his bus trip and cannot afford to take them. Alex’ wife will stay here with the children. They are in school he said and he does not want to take them out. 

My fingers are crossed for them. Gypsies have one of the lowest rates of educational completion in Spain.

Alex has been complaining that it has been getting harder and harder for him. 

There is a gaunt, black and gray bearded Spanish man who often competes with Alex for that place, the best to get donations from people entering and especially leaving the store. I do not know him. His eyes are always down cast, making it hard to break ice. 

Another man, much younger, has broken into the territorial struggle. He is much more aggressive, both in begging and in claiming turf. Alex says he is a drug addict. 

I do not know about that but I can see Alex is facing difficulty in finding a profitable place from which to obtain the beneficence of the passer’s by.

When he returns, as he says he will, I hope to see him and learn more about his trip home and his family here. Maybe I will talk with some of the other street workers (beggars) who look like they could be his kin in terms of physical features, or who are just Romanians. 

Winter is coming and spring, along with warming weather and flowers, may well bring the next chapter of this story.   

A Frisky Sun and Aging Men Alone

The rains have gone but the sun dances through the sky with a thousand veils, each a fantasy. 

It is tempting to walk with my head in the sky to observe this dance and figure out the various shapes and movements.  Alas, other things have demanded my time.

I had a visit with a traumatologist this morning concerning pain in my shoulder. It is so cool here for me since I have private insurance and do not rely on the public system. My monthly fee for that is not even 200 Euros. And it gives full coverage with no co-pays, though I could have paid less and accepted co-pays. There are also no bills coming later.

Today, I got lost and had to get off my bus and walk for maybe half a mile to get to the right place in the Vithas private hospital. That walk was a delight with the clouds and different views of the massive castle on the mountain. I was alone with the sky and almost alone on the sidewalk.

I was called right in.  The doctor, a woman in her late forties probably, sat there cold and formal daring me to try to chit chat, cuz I like to do that and humanize a bit the visit. Oh well, I did get a half smile out of her at one point. 

She reminded me of my barber, though he is a man with thinning black hair swept back and an angular face. He is also quite terse and un-talkative. Business is business and so unlike the kinds of interactions that take place in bars and cafes/ 

I have gotten him to converse with me and he has been a great source of information about aspects of Alicante’s life, since he is born and raised here. So I imagine the issue of the stiffness and stern look is related to formalness and time and place. I will have to come back and report after I have been here more. 

Still, I get a kick out of breaking through that with delicacy so as not to offend, 

In the cafe this morning, while eating my bowl of yogurt with granola, I read an article tangentially related to this that almost made me cry as it cut a little close to my own fears and anxieties.

It was about and 84 year old man in the city of Valencia some two hours away from here by train. Since his wife died he had lived alone. People saw him in cafes and bars, and walking on the street, but he had only formal interactions though people described him as pleasant.  

He was just one of many older, retired men walking or sitting alone in the streets as the day passes by. They often seem unfocused, though at first—after my life in the university—that struck me as a luxury, a delight.

Most men still have focus that I can see, even if I do not know the details. José, for example, who I have written about before, has a round he makes every day with his walker.  

We exchange sentences now and it is wonderful to see the light blooms in his face, eve if the sun is off at a club some where dancing dirty. José is focused on keeping and improving his ability to walk. That is a superb goal.  Of course I do not know what else occupies his time. 

Seeing him and his smile when I greet him always makes me happy. 

Another man, a much younger one who is probably a Latin American and only recently came to Alicante, maybe five or six months ago, I see in cafes having his breakfast which always includes a coke and alcohol. 

He dresses as if a musician and at first said almost nothing to anyone. He is opening up. Today I saw him brightly ask the woman who serves at an Argentine cafe how she was and he called her “mi amor”, my love, with a bright and even flirtatious tone in his voice. This made me happy as he had really seemed lost and self medicated with booze when I first saw him.  

Anyway, back to the article in today’s El País. The man they described had disappeared fifteen years ago and nobody noticed. He was invisible. The firemen broke into his apartment yesterday in a mid rise building and found his skeleton in his bed. He had died, alone as he had lived. 

The journalists wrote about how before he disappeared he had been getting more and more disheveled. His clothes dirty and wrinkled and he, unshaven, his hair uncombed. 

It is so easy to lose yourself in your emotions and thoughts while that slowly happens to you,

There is another man, an Scotsman who is in his early eighties and a fairly recent widower. He is an engineer by training and has lived all over the world supervising projects. He recently returned to Alicante, alone.  

He had lived here before and it was a happy time in his life so he returned though his children and grandchildren live in London.  He does not wish to give in so easily to the entropy of old age but is seeking a revival, even if a small one. 

As a result he came to my English language book group, a bit poorly groomed. We talked and he told me his story and desires in a thickish Scottish brogue. 

He has become a valued member of the group and is active in reading the books, discussing them, and joining people afterwards to go to a bar for a drink. 

Like him, I have made it a point to become part of groups and to develop social relationships. Unlike him, I also make it a point to not live alone.  

By nature, I am just a bit of a loner and have a social anxiety. Those are things that I have to actively work with and against because I am very aware that if not, my fate could very well be that of the man who passed away alone, in his bed, in Valencia. 

The battery of my laptop is about empty, and I feel like going outside to chase the clouds myself and enjoy a bit of the playful sun. 

 

Storm and Spain on its National Day

The rain cut loose with drama. Lightning was striking close by and lakes of water fell, almost at once on the narrow street of tables. 

When I got here to enjoy my pain au chocolate (what they call here a napoleón de chocolate), fight off the pigeons, and write. I had wanted to sit outside, but all the tables were occupied. 

As a result I sat inside, in the darkish and narrow confines that included a row of maybe four or five tables and a counter-display case filled with luscious pastries. If you went further inside this narrow space you found the working bakery and maybe its owner / baker, a dry bread stick of an aging French man.

When it started to rain with the fervor of Evangelicals preaching on a street corner, drenching with sound and wet, suddenly the space overflowed with people. At first confused, I then realized these were the occupants of the tables outside. They carried their plates and cups of coffee and tried to figure out how to accommodate themselves into a much smaller space. 

A woman asked if she could take a chair from my table and, as a result, ice was broken. We talked briefly. I found out they were a group of visiting Rumanians, all women. Alicante has had relatively large numbers of Rumanians, though with rising prices in Spain without corresponding increases in income, the numbers have dropped. But these were visitors. 

One of them asked the server if there was grocery store open on this holiday morning. She had already been defending herself from customer demands in good Argentine sense—“Wait your turn. There is only me today and I cannot work any faster.” At that break i demands she lifted her thermos of hot water and refilled her gourd of yerba maté before taking a few pulls. 

While she drank, almost in unison, I and the similarly aged man sitting next to me in the dark corner, told them almost nothing was open because it was a major holiday.  

This led him and me to speak. Turns out, he is from Paris though his family is Andaluz and his new wife is from Alicante. We had a lovely conversation. At one point, he insisted Spain would be much better off it had cultural unity and just a single language.  I looked at him, with a slight smile and said “Oh I disagree”.  Well we were off, not arguing as you might expect, but dialoguing, two sides in a conversation. And we shall continue that conversation when next we see each other, and we shall, since both he and I live here and frequent that local French bakery. 

That passionate encounter took place on Thursday, the Day of Valencia which also celebrates its language, Valencian. Today is a bigger holiday and when I awoke, my patio was wet from substantial rain in the night .

Today is Spain’s National holiday, the Day of Spain, though there is conflict over its name. It has variously been called the Day of Columbus, the Day of HIspanidad (Hispanicity to coin an awkward term in English), and now the National Day. 

Spain is a lovely word with an ancient history that goes back at least to the Romans, though it probably predates them and may have origins in the Phoenecians who inhabited Much of Spain’s coastal areas (including Alicante). However, the word did not refer to what we today call Spain, but to the entire Peninsula though, in reality, the Romans who dominated the peninsula long enough to leave their language firmly entrenched—we speak a version of it today—made their word Hispania plural to refer to the peninsula. They called it effectively “The Spains”. 

Then Arab and Berber armies came from the same north Africa that had hosted large Phoenecian settlement of relevance to our peninsula, including the amazing city of Carthage. At that point the Roman unity broke and the peninsula became a set of Christian Kingdoms in the fringe of the north and an encyclopedia of Taifas, Moorish “kingdoms” with resultant instabilities. 

You can easily see the history of conflict written on the land in the vertiginous number of castles and watch towers throughout the land, many of them still in reasonably good shape.   

Once Castile and Aragon, the two most powerful Christian kingdoms, had joined forces in the symbolic and dynastic union of Ferdinand and Isabella and conquered the remaining Taifas, including the final one of Cordoba, there was a political union though, as the great historian Benedict Anderson noted, feudal states did not rely on a common language to unify them, but on political fealty which also included kinds of religious celebrations sponsored by kings and lords though the situation was far from one of a single religion, They did create widely shared bureaucratic and educational practices. 

Aragon and Castile had different though closely related languages. Numerous others were spoken in Hispania.

With the crown, now of Spain, taking over American lands and even a small part of Asia (the Philippines), Castilian as a formal written language now called Spanish (although not without argument) was born as an instrument of state. It pulled elites toward it, pushing their Iberian and indigenous tongues to become more and more like Castilian though there is still substantial diversity in the Hispanic world within what is glibly called the Spanish language and supported by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Cervantes Institute (meeting in Peru these days).  

The Romans were probably wise to make Hispania plural. Even today it is plural, although there are areas of unity if not undisputed and many efforts at creating unity.

On this Day of the Nation, one should not forget that about half of the twentieth century left it fractured as Franco and a Fascist wing including the Church performed a coup and drove out the clearly internationalist left that had won elections yet was fractured among itself. The conflict left a landscape saturated with blood and memories of horror.

Only now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century are intellectuals and people really grappling with that past and researching it.

On this day in 2025, nonetheless, Spain leads the European Union—of which it is a part giving it a wannabe nation state without full sovereignty. It tops the Community in terms of economic growth and, to a degree, even in political stability. 

Even if it does not have linguistic or cultural unity,  Spain is worth celebrating for its amazing, if troubled, history and its current, if troubled, success.