Face to Face in Spain

 Face to Face in Spain

You think seasons change slowly, from day to day though sometimes the change feels dramatic. A storm system rolled through bringing rain and colder temperature. Voilà it is fall.

in this way, I just roll along in my day to day life. Most things seem the same. With my focus on what I am reading, thinking, and writing, I miss much else until something breaks into my consciousness, such as this morning. I sat down in a cafe to have my breakfast of yogurt and granola with fruit when a pigeon suddenly flew up almost vertically in front of me. 

On the TV, replays of the encounter in congress between Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s presiden, and Alberto Nuñez Feijóo the head of the main opposition Partido Popular was playing.  After months of seeing this image weekly when I sit down … I mean,  this is news in Spain. Like a bullfight, the politicians wave capes at each other while hiding their swords. The only thing missing is a ground pawing, snorting ton of racing flesh, the bull.  I guess to each other, their opponent is that stinky and frightful beast with spear-sharp points on their horns. 

The debate per se is not what grabbed me. Like Spaniards, I am used to politicians throwing bull pies, at each other. Some of circular messes are fresher than others and splat, while others are hard and strike with a crunch.  One or the other, they stink and may hurt.

If we need to gather these redolent masses of bovine waste, I would rather it be as fuel for a stove to heat up some soup or a rich stew. We could all stand and sit together to share a fresh meal from a rustic stove, the kind that has fed humans for millennia.

The debate qua debate has not broken into my normal reverie of thought. Instead, it was three things. 

First, the country’s president and his main opponent or even the leaders of both main opposition parties, the two mentioned plus the ultra-right Santiago Abascal, stand at their seats in congress, in the hemicircle of wooden desks and chairs, as if the same as every other member of Spain’s lower chamber of congress, that of the deputies,

I cannot image a US president appearing in congress without first hearing the blaring sounds of Hail to the Chief played by a Marine band while everyone else stands to receive him. My county’s president needs a sound track as if in a hollywood movie and needs to have people show obeisance. 

In Spain, I have seen the president enter at the same time as other delegates, just one of the group of the country’s law makers and managers. This flattening of distance, literally because the US hierarch stands or sits on the dais raised above the members of congress arrayed before him—to date it has only been a him, stuns me. 

We Americans are supposed to be equals, though people love to reduce that to being equals in opportunity rather than in substance, while Mr Trump, the current claimant of the US presidency, wants to reduce it further and remove equality in his attacks on Diversity, Inclusion, and, Equality, the policy and training program that was found in many institutions throughout the country before a tide of orange tan sprayed it away. 

To vastly simplify, in the ritual and drama of our encounters between our president and congress, we emphasize hierarchy, exclusion, and difference, HED. This is an increasing norm in our supposedly class-free society. 

Second, Spain’s president gets sharp questions and slams to his face from his opponent, who stand for all the members of the opposition. You can imagine, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo standing up to the towering lodge pole that is Pedro Sanchez. 

Feijóo follows a custom I do not understand of some Spaniards using their maternal last name, rather than their paternal one, since his first surname is Nuñez. 

In any case Feijóo is reported to stand a respectable 1.79 m which translates to 5.79 inches. Nothing to sneeze at.  

In contrast, Sanchez is 1.9 meters, or 6’ 2”. You only really see the difference on TV when they stand close to each other. In congress they sit on opposite sides of the horseshoe- shaped forum and so seem much more equal, though the one is the president and the one is merely a deputy and the leader of the opposition party that came very close to winning the last Presidential elections. 

The head of government, Spain’s king, for the record, stands taller than Sanchez at 1.97 meters, or 6’ 5.52”. He is recorded as the tallest living king on earth.  I have to say I am surprised by how many very tall Spaniards I see on the streets around me. I often feel like I am in Amsterdam that way. 

Height aside, Feijóo has a strong intellect and experience. His team also spends hours tooling lines and data that can draw blood. His darts, spears, and sword are very sharp. He is very much a worthy contender. But then so is Sanchez sometimes, his are sharper and, they are often snappier. 

That the two submit to this public striking and bleeding is hard to imagine for someone schooled in American political life.  But in this ritual warfare, the public issues of the day are vetted and discussed, educating and providing talking points to the public.  

Third, these debates, and they are debates—not the schooled-for TV forums the US holds only during elections to show off the made-up, and well prepared candidates to the public in something that pretends to be a World Wrestling theatrical competition—take place regularly in what are called Control Sessions as part of congressional responsibility of oversight. 

In the US we hold committee meetings behind closed doors and call that oversight—well they do demand documents and so on, before hand, but the image is of a beleaguered member of government dominates. It is never the President sitting in front of a panel of inquisitors and always on the edge of burning with the hot chile that gets shoved down his pants.

As a symbol of democracy, the President of Spain appearing as an equal before the lower house is powerful. That it is frequent makes it even more stronger. 

In the land of thistles and olives, congress can also have the President of the country appear to answer on particular issues before the country and on the legislative agenda.  Today, for example, Sanchez will appear, comparecer to use the special verb in Spanish which rearranges power. Sanchez must respond to authority that is not him. He is the object and not the subject today. Just a day ago he and Feijóo did their thing in congress. In the US our President thinks he is always the subject and all of us the objects of his being. 

Can you imagine how this would rearrange power in Washington. His mighty orangeness would definitely fill his diaper were he subjected to such. 

We talk about co-equal branches of power, but that is a formality. The presidency has been seizing more and more power to itself. 

I shall not stay here before the TV. Instead I shall go look for leaves to kick through—oops, I forgot; I shall be lucky to find even one leaf. I guess I shall have to find pumpkins to carve. Nope, they are not here either. 

Well, I guess I shall just go hunting for things that like pigeons fly up before me. 

The Foghorn

A deep, intense sound booms from the sea. It shakes me from my fog of thoughts. 

At first I had no idea what is was: the voice of Neptune calling for the end of times? 

Deep, dark and menacing as if a tremendous beast had arisen from the deep, perhaps The Beast, letting us know the end times are upon us. 

Putting two and two together I decided it was a foghorn. Not being from the sea coast I had not heard one before. Occasionally, here I hear horns from cruise ships or even more the ferries that cross to Africa twice weekly. I mean, I only live a mile from the port. But those were neither as intense nor as loud as this. 

(After a while, I remembered that the local news had celebrated that one of the largest ocean-going cruise ships in the world would be docking here. The ship was enormous, dwarfing the fairly substantial old and oldest city of Alicante by the port. The city does continue inland to the west, as well as north beyond the guardian hill Benacantil and to the south along the coast. In any of these directions it goes until it becomes something else). 

I exaggerate but that profound roar shocked and even frightened me a bit.

That experience is of the same sort as when I know something deep from within the recesses of my study and even my being and somebody, in that powerful roar, even if their voice is soft, tells me I am wrong. 

Of course, my immediate reaction is to armor up and grab my sword and daggers, since I sense a potentially mortal battle impending. My body starts flooding with testosterone.  

Because of age and learning, as well as a strong desire to cultivate humility and Christian love for other people—including when they attack me, I try to pull myself back and drain away that hormone. I force myself to listen. 

Even if it takes time to get me there,  My ethical discipline is to stop for a bit and listen in the midst of racing, armed forces coming to my defense me in my mind. Once I have brought them under control, I can think. 

That is when I often learn important lessons and knowledge.

Two potential examples: 

First, When I was a young professor at a religious university, despite my best efforts I was filled with myself thinking I was an enlightened and good professor, up to date on the literature and on critical theory. I left an important Brazilian film for my class to be shown while I was away giving a paper at a national academic conference.    

The film was the brilliant Bye Bye Brasil, directed by Carlos Diegues. It is the story Brazil in the midst of massive change—the coming of electricity and television, the post dictatorship, and the massive leveling and development of the Amazon though that was nothing like it is now—through the travels and adventures of an itinerant circus in the old style.   

When I got back and tried to lead a discussion on the film’s themes of modernization and development, as well as the differences of this internal Brazilian form of culture from more academic and outsider discussion, i.e. us. 

The students sat there silently and I should have known that for them silence was a sure sign something was very wrong. I waited, hoping to at least get an opening into their thoughts from some comment. 

Finally, an sharp young woman, blond as I was then, raised her hand and from the middle of the room gave me a tanning.

“How could you do that to us? You left us pornography. You raped us.”

I fell against the blackboard, hurt and defensive. I wanted to argue about the importance of the film. Yes it was “R” rated, a local shibboleth at the time, but I had thought its cultural significance out weighed that.  

I was right and I was wrong.  We did have after a while a good conversation about how can one as scholars, and especially anthropologist, learn about other societies when there ways strike us a wrong and even immoral.

One scene from the movie seemed the trigger. It was when one of the central figures, a young married man, Ciço, came into one of the performers’ tent, a beautiful and sensual woman named appropriately Salomé. They had sex while his very pregnant wife, perhaps close to giving birth, sat outside the tent and heard everything. 

This is such a visceral an necessary critique of modernization from the point of view of traditional rural Brazil, that I forgot how my students felt about portrayals of sex. 

In truth the portrayal was quite chaste. You saw little more than you would in the average James Bond film. Yet that was probably not the issue, I came to realize despite the desire to focus on body parts as a means of deciding what is acceptable and what not. 

Instead it was the betrayal of a self sacrificing and very pregnant wife, practically in front of her. That was a slap that I had not anticipated and did not intend. 

In any case, they learned something and I learned a lot, once I got over myself and listened. 

Another example, one much more recent. In a good conversation, the other day, over dinner, with some Colombians, we were talking about their experiences and different people.  

They showed me a picture of one of their friends while talking about that person’s effeminacy. I said, “yes he seems mariquita.” My friend stopped me and said “that sounds kind of homophobic” which pulled me up short.   

Yikes I spluttered something justifying what I said, and then I had to back up and think. I realized I had used an older language which this generation has thoroughly critiqued and organized against. 

I had to reevaluate and realize there was something homophobic in me behind that usage, going back to my own upbringing and to my years of experience in Latin America.  

Times had changed. I had changed, and so should my language. 

There is so much more I could say, but the vessel that booms its horn towards is is about to leave.   It sounds urgent.

Though I cannot go on a cruise on board it through the Mediterranean and god-knows where, it has given me an intellectual cruise through memory. I still have an awfully lot to think about. That Neptunian roar, whether from the ship, my students, my colleagues, or my friends is one of he most useful, if frightening and painful, things I know.  

 

Crashes, Bars, and People

When I walked out my building’s door this morning, I saw a motorcycle parked there, perpendicular to the cars,  had been knocked over. It smashed its handlebars into the back of a small car decorated with warm and loving stickers. The panel was crunched. It’s fiber glass could not resist the falling bike

I do not know who the car or the bike belonged to. Nor do I know who knocked it down. 

Parking places are scarce in this older part of town, El Centro. People drive around to look for one on the streets or they search the underground parking the city and private businesses provide. My neighbors who have cars (some do and some do not) have contracts  at some distance.

Once in Sugar House, Utah, I came out of a coffee house to find my sedan I’d parked on the busy Highland Drive with its side smashed. No vehicle stuck around to claim responsibility. No driver left a note. I was panicked for a minute about what to do and decided I had to call the police to make a report.

Fortunately there were witnesses. As I calmed down, they showed up and stayed to tell the cops. It turned out a public bus side swiped my car.  At least that was now officially registered. 

They bureaucracy of the agency tried denying it, but the police report made all the difference. I do not even know if the bus driver filled out an incident report which he should have. In any case, the bus company and I  entered a period of struggle. Finally, they had no choice but to pay: my insurance went after them. And they had to give me a rental car, though they tried to give me one with advertising for them on it.

Screech,  I do not know how this fits together, such is the way of accidents. I can only imagine locked brakes sounding like the shrill breaks and squawks of a beginner on a tin whistle. 

Tonight, November 2, I, a beginner, spent a couple of hours in a bar playing Celtic music on that tin whistle in a pick-up group. Odd encounters from earlier times pushed me into athis different reality. 

I’m a bassoon player and do not know how to play the tin whistle but I can figure it out with a little work. A student from Ireland gave me a token of himself when he presented me with one. As I had to get rid of almost all my belongings before coming to Spain, in a split second, I put the whistle in the to keep pile. And here I am with it as the only instrument this former musician brought to Spain and it's my entry fee into a new world. 

Over the years, I have spent little time in bars.  As someone raised Mormon, the culture of such places was foreign. When I ceased to care so much about the religious issues of identity, I just did not have the custom of going

The learning curve of the culture left me with little desire to cross those boundaries unless I was with a group of people who were going there. I have done my duty, to be sure, serving people from a pitcher of beer when I have gone without me drinking any, though I am not a rigorous tea-totaler. 

Once upon a time I got caught not drinking while serving by a significant Peruvian anthropologist who was twelve years older than I, Juan Ossio. His. formative studies of historic messianism—resistance through ritual—in the Western Peruvian Andes had already caught my attention. 

He visited the University of Texas Austin where I was a graduate student. After his talk, we Andeanists went to an outdoor bar. Pitchers of beer were ordered and I did my thing. Ossio interrogated me as to why I was not drinking. 

I had to tell him about my background as a Mormon. He dismissively told me that with that and my refusal to drink I could never make it as an anthropologist in the Andes.

But I did and oddly, it was my Church that killed that career path when they took away my funding and my job. Without those, I could not afford to do field work nor travel to professional meetings, though I kept trying.

Once ensconced in Utah Valley University, I was able to recover a bit, but those key missing years were a gap that hurt and was ultimately unfillable.

That accident of being crushed by power in a community invoked a collective response much larger than a single individual. I raised my fist and resisted, sometimes with others, but at times alone. (A poem written and read in the Salt Lake First Unitarian Church during the depth of those days can be found here: https://avoidingentropy.blogspot.com/2025/11/it-happens.html )

Ossio accompanied lMario Vargas Llosa, Peru’s great novelist, in an important if controversial 1983 commission to the community of Uchuraccay, during Peru’s years of internal war, to investigate the killing of journalists. Later, Ossio became Peru’s Minister of Culture.

His writing has been informative. Beyond that, I learned from him what a snake pit the professional world is in Peru. Unfortunately, our paths never crossed again after Austin.

In a wrenching transition, let’s go Back to the bar today. I had a great time. Though I did not play anywhere near my former standards, I enjoyed playing jigs and reels with two violinists and two guitarists, the violinists from opposite ends of the US and the guitarists from Scotland and Wales, the Celtic fringes.  When I could not play because of key or because they had no sheet music, I sang.  

I walked away and thought now, as I get ready to turn 71, it is time to get over myself and learn to enjoy bars. I do not have to drink, because I really do not enjoy that although I no longer have a religious prohibition against it. 

Bars are about so much more than drink.  They are social places where people gather to hang out. 

So here we go, on the day the motorcycle destroyed the rear of the car in front of my house, I crossed to a different part of life, in a sequence of random associations that somehow seems significant. I now accept having bars as part of my life and enjoying them. While I could still reminisce with Juan Ossio, sadly, it is too late for me to meet Vargas Llosa. He died some six months ago.