The Smoke from America

The Smoke from America

21 August 2025
The Smoke from America
— by David Eugene Perry

Spain is on fire. Historic infernos have incinerated countless hectares and hundreds of homes. As we drive north from our Andalucían base in Grazalema, province of Câdiz, we take an elongated route to avoid the flames.

Midway, the road to Santander is wide and straight. Around the land is flat, rich and fertile. 89 years ago, the Civil War raged here, started by Francisco Franco’s coup against the democratically elected, albeit troubled, Spanish Republic. Three years later, on April 1, 1939, he “won.” Over a million had died. Five months later to the day, El Generalisimo’s pal Hitler invaded Poland and WWII began. It’s impossible not to connect the two: one a rehearsal, the second a fully realized production, both an assault on democracy, diversity and decency. 

As we drive past fields once ravaged by tanks and artillery, in the distance looms the monument Franco built to his victory: El Valle de los Caidos – the Valley of the Fallen. Pharaonic in scale and Fascistic in design, the massive church, monastery and funerary complex inaugurated in 1961 is impossible to miss from the road. Its 400 foot tall cross and fortress like façade stay in our sight for miles. From 1975 when he died after a 36 year dictatorship until his body was moved to a private cemetery in 2019, Franco lay beneath a dome carved out of a mountain, frescoed with angels and nationalist troops ascending to Heaven over an altar. No Republican seraphs here, although their forced labor built it.

Next to “El Caudillo” was for many years the final resting place of Jose Antonio – founder of Falánge: Spain’s Fascist party. When Franco was disinterred, so, too, went Jose Antonio to burial elsewhere. There was much angst from nuevo and still living Franquistas and many sighs of relief from a new government hopeful that – finally – the ghosts of La Guerra Civil had been both exhumed and exorcised. Now renamed El Valle de Cuelgamuros, the site is “officially” a memorial to both sides of the conflict. However, in Spain, everyone knows its nativity. I have visited three times: with, without and moving on from Franco. It’s Albert Speer’s fantasy in stone.

As “El Valle” disappears in our rear view mirror, I iphone the latest headlines from 9 hours in the past: Trump gilding new ICE SUVs. The DC duo of Miller & Hesgeth rousting “old hippies” from Union Station. Little Marco doodling a Ukraine peace plan on his Etcha-Sketch before 47 shakes it into nothingness. An all-white enclave in Arkansas whose library holds “Mein Kampf” and undoubtedly the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” 

In my own time zone, “El Pais” reports on US citizens now rushing Iberian shores to escape Trump’s erratic but growing authoritarianism. The wave of “exilados” is not yet a tsunami but is a mounting tide. Better to swear allegiance to a constitutional king than to a king who forgets he has one. And yet least we forget, the 47th president was elected: a proof of democracy whose pudding is already rank and rancid seven months in.

The night of Trump’s 2016 election, I turned to my Spanish husband and said: “It’s time.” We started the process of my becoming a Spanish citizen, even though deep down I poo poohed my alarm as theatricality. Two elections, two impeachments and three new Supreme Court justices later, I no longer see my Spanish passport as dramatics. I see it as an increasingly desirable option: a lifeboat I never thought to be lowered.

What will be my breaking point? There have already been so many: Charlottesville, January 6, extortion of American universities, resurrection of Confederate leaders and burial of Black history. The murder of PBS and censoring of the Smithsonian. There is no one breaking point for me. I merely feel broken as I feel that what was once true US democracy is now itself broken. If my marriage somehow gets annulled, that will truly be the nadir for me. I won’t live in a country that would rescind a right so long in the making. 

In Spain, and in Europe, they know a dictator when they see one. There are no illusions here about the path on which Trump is embarking and its subsequent embrace of religion and white nationalism as tools to further his power grab. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (historian and adviser to John F. Kennedy) opined in 1960 — paraphrasing an earlier version by Sinclair Lewis: “The danger is that fascism in America will come draped not in swastikas but in our own flag and the cross.”

There is a famous Spanish phrase that describes the post Civil War penchant for trying to forget its ugliness. “Barre el pasado debajo de la alfombra.” Sweep the past under the carpet.

Since the 2022 Ley de Memoria Democrática (Historical Memory Law), Spain has been peeling back the rug and exposing decades of calcified pain and putting it in perspective. A long overdue dusting continues, and the air is cleaner for it. Sadly, as I look over my shoulder at Franco’s erstwhile tomb and our own erstwhile Republic, the air is full of smoke.

David Eugene Perry is the author of the award winning novel “Upon This Rock”. He is in Spain working on its sequel, “Thorns of the 15 Roses” whose centenarian characters are survivors of the Spanish Civil War.