TGIF In Espana
...and why Americans will never take it to the streets in protest
It was Friday the 14th, Valentine’s Day in Cadiz but it didn’t seem to be the big deal that it is in the United States. No obscene commercialism kick-starting the day beginning all the way back in January. Aisles and aisles of Hallmark cards with Won’t You Be Mine? sentiments and red heart-shaped boxes filled with cheap, sugary, constipation-inducing chocolate.
Valentine’s Day in Cadiz started in low sixties while there was sleet and slush back in Boston. With nothing better to do we headed to the waterfront and found a cafe so we could do our favorite European pastime: Drink café con leche and watch the world go by.
I don't know what was going on, but suddenly what looked to be a MIB convention appeared.
This is the 21st century, and journalism and travel is changing. Strike that: Journalism and travel have changed. Radically. The NYT, WP, and LAT are Vichy publications. FB, IG, and X are state-run outlets. The president of AirBnB is a member of DOGE.
I’m not an historian or a tour guide. I’m just some guy wandering the earth.
You can call me your guyde if you want. Ha!
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you need voices like mine more than ever. Places like Substack are the New Journalism. For the time being, at least.
If you see something that interests you, follow the links I provide. Or Google some more if you’re that interested. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to stumble along like we do, which is how we find a lot of things.
Cadiz is tiny. Like, really small but with a lot of little winding streets.
The winding streets make it confusing and fun at first, but you quickly get the hang of the place. When we first got there, I thought the Plaza de Espana was way on the other side of the city. It turns out it was about two streets over from our apartment!
So Cadiz is a port, and there’s a little bay with two forts on either side, Castillo de Santa Catalina and and Castillo San Sebastian.
Typically named after saints. Typically used as fortifications and prisons. You know: the whole, God is on our side mentality.
What makes smaller cities like Cadiz interesting and fun is that you see the locale on a more micro level. For example, at the Castillo de Santa Catalina there was a permanent exhibit on the dockyard munitions explosion in 1947, a local story that probably wasn’t more than a small ripple in the news cycle at that time, more akin to the Great Molasses Flood in Boston in 1919.
Across the parade ground—in the chapel, no less—was an art exhibit!
Santo Plastico. Saint Plastic.
I get so excited when I stumble across weird little examples of contemporary art like this, especially now. Their significance is heighten for me by the fact that it’s not unthinkable that exhibits like this soon may be outlawed or heavily curtailed in my country, and that my own work will come under scrutiny.
But it only makes me want to respond and create more. It’s just the way I’m wired.
2016 was only a precursor to the fear and hatred I feel emanating from the United States now. In January 2016 I was in Johnson, Vermont. There were two bars in that little Vermont town, and on a Friday night one of those bars held Karaoke night.
TGIF!
The poet M- and I stood and watched the younger artists’ unbridled dancing and singing, I’m thinking in defiance of the incoming administration that year, and M-, who I think is a little older than me and Swedish, leaned over to me and shouted into my ear, They have no idea what’s coming.
And now it’s here.
So let them dance and sing the night away/sing and dance against the darkness/Karaoke and jackboots in the night
Canadians are loudly booing the American national anthem at hockey games, and that’s probably only the beginning. Can you blame them? Tariffs sanctioned on their country for no reason. You can imagine that Americans will soon be persona non grata everywhere. It’s not right; it’s not fair because not every American supports MAGA, but that’s not how human nature works.
Sue rolls her eyes and emits a groan when I talk like this. I’m being melodramatic, my imagination is running away from me…again, she says.
I’m a storyteller. I write plays and short stories. My pictures tell stories.
I’ll always try to upend the narrative, I continue. Even this Substack. Disguised as a blog about art and travel. What do you expect? I inquire.
And I keep reminding her that all my life I’ve been a canary in a coal mine. I notice things (and get irritated by them) much sooner than my fellow humans.
When I started traveling when I was all of 18 years old and having never even been up in a plane before, I boarded a plane by myself, landing in Luxembourg, and I went as far east as Ankara, Turkey, then circled back around to Greece and throughout western Europe.
If I have any regrets, it’s that I didn’t continue eastward, traveling to places like Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan when I could, because now because of politics I’ll never see them.
That’s what I worry about now. Travel in the future will be difficult because some countries, even my beloved Canada, won’t be so welcoming. Either for political reasons. Or maybe because of something like public health, because Americans won’t be known for following worldwide medical protocols and guidelines. Who knows, right?
It’s Friday night in Cadiz. And the narrow streets are packed. All ages. Seniors strolling arm in arm, still together after all those years. Husband and wives keeping herd over their children. Teens smoking and flirting. Only the plazas are a bit less crowded, where the volume of people gushes from the streets and spreads out into the open spaces.
The cities in Spain are built for life in the streets. So many restaurants, tapis bars, cafes. Apartments are small, and people don’t want to be cooped up.
So every night they go down in the streets. And talk to one another, and engage with one another. They mingle.
There isn’t the isolation you see in the United States. Where people, alone, in their cars, clog the highways. People hurry along with earbuds closing out the world. People stay in the houses, the television on constantly, pumping swill into their brains.
One afternoon I was sitting alone at a cafe on the Calle Rosario, writing, reading. Two senoritas approached me, selling string bracelets they made. I thought Sue would like one. Three euros. I gave them a five, and told them to keep the change. Their joy was contagious.
When N, a Canadian, we live across from one another on the same floor of our building, walked by, I invited him to join me, and then Sue came downstairs, and for hours we drank wine and coffee, and talked. About travel and politics between our countries, and life.
What will it take? people ask. What will it take for Americans to take to the streets in protest.
Answer: Never. It will never happen, because the streets here belong to the people, and they are just as comfortable in the streets as they are in their own beds. Whereas Americans are drawn to the world of their televisions.
There: I said it.
We will now go back to our regularly scheduled program.
Nice to read that street life in Europe is still alive and well! Loved the “passeggiata” in Italy - just what you describe here. During Covid, the Neapolitans sang in unison from their balconies. President’s Day here on Monday saw protests throughout the country - modest in size - but protests still the same. All is not yet lost but definitely strained. Cadiz looks like wonderful respite. Buen viaje a Seville👍🙏😘