Sections
Highlight
Troy Nahumko
Malaga
Friday, 30 May 2025, 14:16
The more a body wanders this careworn planet, the more it's ambushed by the odd, homespun kinks that nations keep tucked behind their tourist brochures. Should you stray beyond the pages of your Lonely Planet - whose writers, bless us, sometimes confuse "hidden gem" with "souvenir shop" - you may trip over delights no outsider was ever meant to notice: the USSR's Sistema hippies, rock concerts thundering beneath Hoxha's Albanian bunkers, or a Portuguese cousin of the Rolling Stones.
But claim a patch of foreign ground, whether by courage, curiosity or a spectacular wrong turn, and those coquettish oddities you once admired from the safety of a tour bus stop batting their lashes and start unpacking bags at the foot of your bed. Some of the new local habits grow on you; others remain riddles that stump even the locals, who shrug and change the subject when asked to explain. My own country tried its hardest to conceal its Justin Bieber habit, yet the virus wiggled out of the lab.
Spain is where I discovered that "Alaska" isn't only a slab of permafrost America conned from the Czar, but a neon-plumed pop queen who now goose-steps through the deeper hallways of the national subconscious like a karaoke commandress firing glitter rounds at 3am variety shows. In a spasm of bureaucratic hallucination, the PP recently stapled her partner's name to a cultural centre; a fellow so heroically devoid of discernible talent he makes a Kardashian look like Miles Davis. It's bureaucratic surrealism at full throttle and utterly unfathomable to the outsider who wasn't forced to endure them back when there were only two channels and the others aired Mass or bullfights.
These absurdities remain impenetrable unless you were spoon-fed them with your breakfast cereal. Politics is another. While first-generation immigrants now make up 15.5% of Spain's population, we hold barely 1.7% of the seats in Congress - well below ratios in the UK (15%), Germany (11%), or the Netherlands (18%). It's not raw xenophobia; many newcomers are Latin American, share the language and integrate fast. What they don't share is the party culture. From the outside, Spain's political machines are as opaque as paying to watch Mario Vaquerizo mime a chorus he can't sing.
The few immigrant faces that do slip past security aren't ushered in by a groundswell of votes; they're air-dropped by party bosses who control Spain's infamously closed-list primaries. Voters can only rubber-stamp the order pre-printed by headquarters, so the "diversity pick" lands precisely where the machine wants them: far enough down the list to applaud, close enough to the cameras to wave. Once inside, tokenismo does the rest. They stay stagnant while the old guard hop the revolving door to cushy consultancies with the very industries they were meant to police - energy boards, construction conglomerates, telecom giants, take your pick.
Unlike the long, noisy street fight that forced parties to open spaces for women, nobody in Spain pauses to wonder why 15 percent of the country only gets 1.7 percent of the microphone. There's no introspection. They just snap a diversity selfie, file the press release, and wheel the mannequin back into storage until the next campaign season.
Rotterdam boasts an Aboutaleb, Toronto a Chow, Paris even a Hidalgo - yet can you imagine Ayuso and the far right's reaction to a Khan in Madrid? I'd rather not either.
Publicidad
Publicidad
Publicidad
Publicidad
Esta funcionalidad es exclusiva para registrados.
Reporta un error en esta noticia
Comentar es una ventaja exclusiva para registrados
¿Ya eres registrado?
Inicia sesiónNecesitas ser suscriptor para poder votar.