Author: Alfredo Casuso

Echoes Above El Mazucu

by David Eugene Perry / Photos by Alfredo Casuso

Part of a continuing exploration of off-the-beaten-path Spain by Alfredo and David, including research for the forthcoming novel, Thorns of the 15 Roses, sequel to Upon This Rock.

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14 October 2025: We left Llanes at 8:30 a.m., climbing gradually through the folds of the Sierra del Cuera. A cool morning mist softened the landscape without obscuring it, revealing flashes of green valleys and grazing cattle between the switchbacks. By mid-morning, we reached the high point of Los Resquilones, a viewpoint and pass overlooking the valley of El Mazucu and, beyond it, the faint silver of the Cantabrian Sea.

Photo: The trident of the Second Republic crowns Los Resquilones, overlooking El Mazucu and the distant Cantabrian Sea.

There stands a striking trident-shaped memorial: three steel arcs painted in the colors of the Second Republic — red, yellow, and violet — rising from a concrete base.

Its plaque reads:

A los luchadores antifascistas
A los milicianos caídos en Asturias

“Aunque el otoño de la historia
cubra vuestras tumbas
con el aparente polvo del olvido,
no renunciaremos jamás
ni a la más vieja de vuestras ilusiones.”
— Miguel Hernández

To the antifascist fighters
To the fallen militiamen of Asturias

“Though the autumn of history
may cover your graves
with the apparent dust of oblivion,
we shall never renounce
even the oldest of your dreams.”

Just next to it, the cracked remnants of a Franco-era memorial to Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion, erected in the 1940s in tribute to Hitler’s airmen who lent their support to the Spanish dictator. A frequent target for graffiti, it was finally dismantled in 2016, forty-one years after Franco’s death.

Both monuments have their nativity in the Battle of El Mazucu (6 – 22 September 1937). It was here, in this same high terrain, that one of the fiercest episodes of Spain’s northern campaign of the Civil War unfolded. Fewer than 5,000 Republican defenders — those loyal to Spain’s democratically elected government — held these passes against roughly 33,000 Nationalist troops, backed by artillery and aerial bombardment from the German Condor Legion.

For over two weeks, dense fog and steep terrain favored the defenders. The fighting was close, personal, and unrelenting. But when supplies ran out and the bombardment intensified, the Republican line finally broke. Though the Nationalists took the position, their advance into eastern Asturias was slowed by weeks — a delay earned through extraordinary resistance.

Locally, the engagement is still remembered as “La Termópilas española” — the Spanish Thermopylae — a name that captures both the courage and the inevitability of the fight. As a Virginian, I’m very aware that the miasma of our own civil war still casts a long shadow 160 years on. Here in Spain, there are still people alive who remember, fought, and endured their own fratricidal horror. The wounds are still fresh.

The Ayuntamiento de Llanes and the association FAMYR (Federación Asturiana Memoria y República) continue to commemorate the defenders of El Mazucu and have petitioned to designate the site a Lugar de Memoria Democrática.

Above El Mazucu, the Sierra del Cuera is alive with quiet motion. The hillsides are a patchwork of heather, gorse, and bracken, the ground damp and aromatic after the morning mist. Ferns spill down the rock faces, and moss creeps along stone walls where birch, chestnut, and beech trees cling to the slopes.

From the air come the cries of buzzards and ravens, and sometimes the sharp call of a peregrine falcon diving across the ridge. Foxes, martens, and roe deer keep to the forest edge, rarely seen but often signaled by tracks in the mud.

Sheep and cattle graze the high meadows — clinging like furry gymnasts to the perilous heights — unbothered by us as we pass. A more glorious and tranquil hike we’ve never had. Asturias continues to entrance.

The nearby village of El Mazucu still bears quiet signs of that past. The Capilla del Ángel de la Guarda stands near its entrance, its bell reportedly forged from the nose of an old aerial bomb — a small but potent emblem of transformation from war to peace.

Here we stopped briefly at Bar Roxin, the hamlet’s lone tavern and a gathering place for locals, hikers, and cyclists. My vermut was tinted with sidra, and Alfredo’s beer was cold. We drank in the atmosphere of, perhaps, the most remote watering hole at which we’d raised a glass.

Not far down the road, a rock-face shrine appeared almost by surprise — a small alcove carved into the limestone, containing crosses, flowers, and candle stubs. Spain is replete with such as this: an ermita rupestre popular — informal devotional oratories rather than registered chapels. A cool spring, moss-lined, gurgled below the cave.

From there, the road winds down toward La Huera de Meré and La Puentenueva, crossing territory marked by the wooden signs of the Parque de las Cavernas del Oriente de Asturias — the so-called Cavemen’s Route. We passed its mapboard and trailheads, knowing we’d return another day to explore the prehistoric caves of El Pindal, Tito Bustillo, and El Buxu.

The municipality promotes more than twenty filming locations across the region, including works such as The Orphanage (2007), Los jinetes del alba, and several films by Gonzalo Suárez. It’s easy to see why directors are drawn. “Atmospheric” doesn’t do justice to the word, or the landscape.

By 12:30 p.m., we were back in Llanes. The mist had lifted; the sea lay calm. In four hours we had moved from port to peak, from war memorials to wayside shrines — a landscape dense with history and memory.

Hostage Father Dr. Jonathan Dekel-Chen on Today’s Events

I am sharing this heartfelt and honest commentary, as its author — Dr. Jonathan Dekel-Chen

— is someone whose integrity, compassion and commentary I have come to greatly respect. 

Last year, reading Dekel-Chen’s painfully frank chronicle of his family’s personal experience of October 7, I reached out to him for advice vis-a-vis a US / Israeli client of ours. His generous response continues to touch me. Throughout today’s seminal events in Israel and Gaza, and listening live to Donald Trump’s speech at the Knesset, my mind went back to my interaction with Dr. Dekel-Chen. It does not surprise me that his commentary offered below is both profound and timely.

— David Eugene Perry

My Son Was a Hostage in Gaza. Israelis Are Grateful to Trump – But Unsure About Peace.

Deep wounds and distrust on both sides will make for a long and difficult path to two states and lasting peace.

By Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Contributor 

13 October 2025

As I write these lines this morning, 20 living hostages have emerged from the valley of death and are reuniting with their families two years after they were abducted during a Hamas attack on southern Israel. So much has been lost since Oct. 7, 2023, both for Israelis and for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. There was jubilation across Israel today, notably in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, the plaza occupied by loved ones that became the gathering place for protests and vigils calling for the hostages’ release. But the reality for most Israeli families is more complex. As the father of a former hostage released last February, I understand both the joy and the worries.

For the families of the remaining 28 hostages who are understood to be deceased – and for the whole country – fear and apprehension abound, with more questions than certainties whirling around us. What condition are the living hostages in? How many bodies of murdered hostages will Hamas return to Israel in the coming days – or at all? Will all of this really lead to the end of the war? Perhaps not, given the statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Likud party about restarting the war once all of the hostages are home. Further down the road, what will U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan mean for the future of Israel’s security and the future for millions of Gazans? If Israel or Hamas violate the agreements outlined in Trump’s wider plan, this hostage-prisoner exchange may turn out to be just another lonely moment in the Israeli-Arab conflict.

We Israelis are certain about some things. First, our society is in crisis as a result of this war, which has fomented widespread disdain and distrust for Netanyahu’s government. The prime minister has steadfastly refused to take accountability for the Israeli intelligence and policy failures that led to the catastrophe of Oct. 7. The cynical behavior of his government since the massacre – including his offensive statements suggesting hostages’ families were hurting the war effort and his continued efforts to undermine the judiciary and erode our checks and balances – disgusts most Israelis.

No one could miss the public gratitude in recent days from the Israeli public to Trump and his team. On Oct. 8, 2023, I knew that only forceful, sustained pressure from the Oval Office on the Israeli government and Hamas leadership would bring hostages home alive, if at all. Why? Because Israeli and Hamas leaders had intrinsic reasons to continue fighting.

Tragically, for the hostages and for civilians in Gaza, my early fears were borne out. The Israeli public felt trapped by the cynical actions of the Netanyahu government until Trump changed the equation by creating a situation in which Israel’s prime minister could not say “no” to the president’s plan to end the war. Seen in this light, the outpouring of public gratitude to Trump makes sense. Netanyahu has ignored our demands to end the war, which were loudly expressed in every public opinion poll and countless mass demonstrations across the country.

Millions of Israelis recognize that the Netanyahu government has not acted in the hostages’ best interests or indeed in the nation’s best interests. Only blunt American intervention forced Netanyahu to abide by what our own citizens have overwhelmingly demanded for two years.

We know that Netanyahu torpedoed previous rounds of negotiation in order to keep his government intact. But we do not know if he or Hamas leaders intend to abide by the rest of Trump’s plan. Fulfilling the U.S. president’s vision of a post-Hamas Gaza will require the United States, the mediators, Persian Gulf states and other concerned countries to keep maximum pressure on both the Israeli government and Hamas leadership. Otherwise, either player may very well resume the cycle of war.

What will happen following the ceasefire? Trump’s plan outlines a multinational effort to rebuild Gaza and it offers a promise for Palestinian statehood. For decades before Oct. 7, liberal Israelis – along with much of the world – backed a two-state solution, but this support has eroded in Israel over the last two years, with half of Israelis saying it’s not possible.

Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, I was active in the Israeli peace movement that promoted that model of coexistence from my kibbutz home on the border of Gaza. But as a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz and the parent of a hostage who was held for nearly 500 days in terrible conditions, Oct. 7 forced me to reassess my position. I believed until then that Palestinians deserved a state of their own alongside Israel. The destruction of Nir Oz by armed terrorists and civilian looters from Gaza, who were fed hate and propaganda, has now sadly given me pause about the future of coexistencebetween Israelis and Palestinians.

What’s to be done now? The first order of business – aside from feeding the people of Gaza and rebuilding the destruction – must be a focus on de-escalating hatred on both sides of the border. We must break this spiraling hatred that has worsened in the last two years.

Israelis must reckon with the destruction in Gaza. And the Palestinian people must understand the depth of the wounds of Oct. 7. Until we find a way to defuse those old hatreds, I cannot see a pathway towards a two-state solution. Perhaps finally forging that path from the ground-up, outside the realm of conventional politics, could be what emerges from these horrific last two years of war.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is a professor of Jewish history and the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & Eastern European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, and his son Sagui Dekel-Chen spent nearly 500 days as a hostage in Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023.

From Cantabria to the Cross: A Coastal Detour

— by David Eugene Perry, photos by Alfredo Casuso

Part of a continuing exploration of Off-the-beaten-path Spain by Alfredo and David, including research for the forthcoming novel, Thorns of the 15 Roses, sequel to Upon This Rock

.11 October 2025: Leaving Santander, Alfredo and I took the slower, scenic road back to Llanes — the one that hugs the Cantabrian coastline and slips inland through forests and cliffs. Near Pechón, we pulled off the road at a vista point overlooking the sea. There, at the Mirador de Tina Menor, sits “El Pescador de Caña,” a bronze fisherman seated on a rocky perch, rod in hand, his gaze fixed toward the surf.

Installed in September 2010, the sculpture is the work of Antonio Coello de Portugal Narváez, a Madrid-born architect and sculptor who made Pechón his home. Standing nearly three meters tall and weighing 800 kilograms, it honors generations of Cantabrian fishermen who have eked out a life and a living in the waters of this rugged region.

It was a perfect prelude. From sea to mountain, from salt to stone — our route that day would trace a “pilgrim’s progress” in northern Spain.

Our inland goal was the Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, hidden deep in the valleys at the foot of the Picos de Europa in the Medievally-charming but very touristy town of Potes. 

Founded in the 6th century, it is one of Christianity’s five perpetual Jubilee sites, alongside Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago, and Caravaca de la Cruz. Here is preserved the Lignum Crucis — the largest surviving fragment of “The True Cross” brought from Jerusalem by Saint Toribio, Bishop of Astorga — allegedly a piece of wood from the cross on which Jesus was reputedly crucified.

It’s hard to believe, but it was almost 25 years ago that we visited here for the first time, with our dear friend — family — the late Bishop Otis Charles. As Alfredo observed: “one doesn’t have to ‘believe’ to nonetheless feel the significance that people have been coming here for 1200 years in pilgrimage.”

The monastery is austere and ancient, its stone walls steeped in centuries of prayer. Inside, the Chapel of the Lignum Crucis gleams with baroque gold — the reliquary cross catching the flicker of candlelight.

Outside, plaques recall the work of those who restored the monastery, including Fray Desiderio Gómez Señas (1925–2007), whose dedication revived both the buildings and the ancient cult of the Holy Cross.

In the cloister, an exhibit tells the story of Beatus of Liébana, the 8th-century monk who wrote his visionary Commentary on the Apocalypse here — a text that shaped medieval art and theology. His illuminated Beatos became not just religious manuscripts but priceless and irreplaceable pieces of Spanish and world patrimony. To me, literally, they are Revelation.

Beatus’ voice serves my current writing, Thorns of the 15 Roses, where Spain’s layered past — sacred and violent, mystical and political — rises to the surface.

Outside the monastery gates, the Camino Lebaniego beckons — a pilgrimage route that diverges from the Camino del Norte, leading travelers inland toward Santo Toribio and the relic of the True Cross. It’s an ancient path of redemption, once believed to heal both soul and body. Today, hikers and cyclists follow it much as their medieval forebears did — for faith, for beauty, or simply for silence.

Our drive continued through the valley — past Castro Cillorigo and Tama, small towns tucked between chestnut groves and the rising flanks of the Picos. We passed roadside shrines, stone bridges, and the faint scent of burning wood — the sensory palette of autumn in Cantabria. 

By the time the sun began to dip behind the peaks, the sea — “La Mar” as I always insist on calling it, never “El Mer” — once again pops into view. How I love looking out onto that vast, salty horizon. In a few weeks, Alfredo and I will return home via ship. This entire trip, and my writing and research, has been ocean framed. I can’t help but note that all three of Columbus’ vessels could easily have fit in the dining room of Holland America’s “Oosterdam”, our homeward “ride.” In my onboard maritime history lectures, I always recount stories from that “Age of Exploration.” This next set will be richer because of our time in Spain.

From Pechón’s fisherman to Santo Toribio’s reliquary, the journey had traced a single invisible thread: the Cantabrian people’s enduring dialogues between Earth and Sea; Heaven and Human.