Interview with Jackie: How the Combination of Living in Spain and Covid-19 Turned a Liberal Into a Libertarian

Background: I’ve known Jackie for at least a decade. I met her while she was working at a local gym as a personal trainer, a grueling 12 hour/day job. A few years ago, she was experiencing burnout and decided to move to Spain to teach English in primary school. 

We reconnected a few weeks ago after not speaking for a few years. As we were catching up it became clear to me that several of her political opinions had changed. I remembered her as a typical New York liberal and now she sounded like … a libertarian. I asked her about it directly. 

Jackie didn’t hesitate to share how the combination of living abroad in a country with a more socialized economy, plus the global turmoil of the Covid-19 pandemic, had completely transformed her political views. She described it as a multi-year political awakening. There were several turning points and several steps. 

I asked if she would be willing to share her experience and she readily agreed. The following essay consists of excerpts from an interview we did, edited for length and clarity. 

In the essay below, Jackie is speaking in the first person. This is posted with her consent.

“When I left for Spain, my expectations were just to have an easier life. And, a more laid back life. I wanted to live near the beach. I wanted to get out of New York and find myself, which I did. I will say at that time, my political views were like everyone else in New York: Trump is Satan. Trump is Hitler. And our country is going to hell. 

“I believed the left media and all the clips where they made [Trump] look like a jerk. Like everyone else, I was disgusted by the pussy grabbing comments. And really, I would have classified myself as a liberal Democrat. Maybe a libertarian about some things, but I always voted Democrat in New York and the United States.

“I definitely voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries. I would have supported Elizabeth Warren in 2020. 

“I think Bernie Sanders genuinely cares about America and all Americans. I was confusing that with the programs he wanted to implement — and actually, with really not knowing what that would look like until it was highlighted in the 2019 primaries that his Medicare for all and free college would equate to much higher taxes. I just had not equated those two things.

“[By the time I left for Spain,] I was starting to turn from Democratic policies because Obamacare had basically ruined my life. Like, I now had to pay all this money every month that I already didn't have, and in return I got basically nothing.  I still couldn't go see a doctor, and yet I was paying an extra $500 a month. Obamacare was part of why I left America. I could not afford to live in New York anymore. So for me, taxing the already taxed middle-class is not okay. Just not okay.

“Now, part of that is that living in New York City is much more expensive than the rest of the country. So perhaps if I were in, for example, a state like Tennessee, I would have felt differently.

“But, that’s where I was when I left: so wanting to believe in the Democratic cause but, starting to turn. I mean, who wants to vote for a pussy grabber?

“[My first impressions of Spain were] very positive. And here's the thing Americans don’t realize: [Americans] have air conditioning and drying machines and these are not things that other countries have regularly. So I learned to live without air conditioning and drying machines, but I didn't care because I was paying the equivalent of $600 US to have a studio apartment two blocks from the beach. $600 US! That included all my utilities, and my rent, my electric, and everything. So I didn't really care about lost luxuries. 

“I did love the Spanish way of life. They work to live. In fact, they barely work, but that's fine. Here's the thing: they do what they need to do. But I liked that. There's just a lot more time for leisure set aside in their life. 

“Here’s an example: even the question, “what do you do for a living?” You don't ask that. In the Spanish language you ask, "what do you dedicate yourself to?” Because it might not be work. It's culturally accepted that it might not be work. It's even in their language. Whereas “what do you do for a living?” is question number one in New York — possibly in America.

“There is a lot more focus on the family [in Spain]. So for example, if you're getting government benefits, but you live with your parents, you can kind of swing it. There's not the whole “leave your parents’ home in your twenties and do your own thing” thing. It’s not the entrepreneurial, strike-out-on-your-own culture of America, it's different.

“[These days], I would describe myself as Libertarian. I value the rights of all, but I absolutely believe we should keep the government smaller and to the states.

"There were two things [that brought me to that opinion]: I saw what happened under socialism in Spain. And there were a lot of things related to COVID that opened my eyes as well, both in Spain and America. 

“So I'll start with socialism in Spain. Socialism, as it seems to me, would mean putting your own personal needs aside for the good of all. Which, again, sounds lovely in theory, but in practice quickly becomes dysfunctional. And a couple of things I saw are good examples of that. 

“I was working at a school [in Spain]. I was a language assistant. And I had to work with a teacher who was a Spanish teacher who spoke English. I was there to be the native English speaker. In my third year [at the school], the teacher I worked with was physically abusing the children. In front of me.

“I was taken aback; I was horrified. I’m staring at her. And she would say to me, as she was whipping them across the room and throwing them on the floor — just six-year-old children — she would say, “I have to treat them like this, or they won't listen.”

"What I saw would be considered a crime in the United States. It was an absolute crime. Police would be called in the United States. I was horrified. I was having nightmares. 

“I reported it to the director of my program and that person told me that physical abuse is not necessarily illegal in Spain. And when I pressed, I basically found out once you get a government job in Spain, it's very, very hard to get rid of you. You have that job. It's yours, it's your job. So a teacher basically has to kill a kid or rape a kid to be removed from [his or her] post. Physical abuse is not enough of a reason to be fired.

“That's one place where I started to realize, ‘oh, [socialism provides for] the good of all, everyone has their government job and gets to keep it…. Until that comes at the expense of the individual,’ and these individuals were six year old children that were being abused.

“I saw that teachers [in Spain] know that there will be no consequences for their actions. Their kids could fail the class. They could beat the kids. They could be a terrible teacher. There's zero consequences. There’s no accountability.

“Another thing I witnessed happened to an American teacher who was a colleague of mine. Our program provided us with a health insurance of sorts — we were actually not on the public health. It was crappy health care, and it didn't cover birth control. So one of my American colleagues wanted to go get birth control because it was not covered on our program. In order to do so, she had to find just a regular doctor working on his own.

“Well when she went for her birth control, this male doctor sexually harassed her and told her, “You know, if you kiss me, you don't have to pay for the appointment.”

It was horrifying, just horrifying. So she called me and said, “Jackie, what do I do?” She was young. She was maybe 23. And for us as foreigners, it did feel a little weird to just go to the police. Plus we all had an academic understanding of the Spanish language, but to report a sexual harassment by a doctor in Spanish is hard.

“I said to her, ‘why don't you report this to the U S embassy and have them take it further.’ So she reported it to the U S embassy. The US embassy did some research into this doctor and found out he had prior accusations of sexual harassment by his nurse coworkers and another American tourist who was sick in Gran Canaria on a cruise. 

“This was not his first accusation of sexual harassment, but because everyone can keep their job in Spain, as a doctor you can sexually harass women and continue your medical practice.

“My friend went with the United States embassy to make yet another claim against this doctor for sexual harassment. And you know what, when I left Spain, this man was still practicing medicine. Yes. 

“So, I saw that a productive society needs to have accountability. And in a socialist system, with tons of red tape to get people fired and out of their jobs, that doesn’t happen. Over time, it becomes public harm. It does not serve the collective to have no recourse for bad actors. I was starting to see that. 

“And then, you know, the public health there, everyone makes it out to be so good. It's fine. I would never call it good. Some of my colleagues were enrolled in public health care and when they went to go to the waiting room of these places, the lines would be so long.

"In terms of the quality of care, there was nothing that was really good about it. So I saw that much of what was said about public health was propaganda.

"But what started to really turn my opinion [about socialism] was when everything happened with COVID.

“Spain had had a fascist regime under Francisco Franco, which ended in 1975. And to this day, you still hear echoes of that. We really felt the echoes during COVID because Spain had higher rates of COVID earlier on than a lot of other countries. So they locked down the country. And when I say locked down — full disclosure, I was not there. Thank God, I was in England at the time — but my friends who were there told me, they were only allowed to leave the house to go to the supermarket and the pharmacy. The military would stop you on the street to check the timestamp on your grocery receipt. And if it was not ‘in accordance,’ you got a ticket for being on the street.

“That scared me. It's not okay in America. And it even got to the point where one of my friends went out to get chips and cookies, because he was watching a movie, and the military stopped him on the street, looked in his bag and said, 'this isn't essential. It’s chips and cookies.' And gave him a ticket. The police were making arbitrary judgments about people’s personal decisions and fining them for it.

“It didn’t stop there. The police and the military would harass people on the street when they were doing things as mundane as taking out their own garbage, to ask where they were going. It was a level of police harassment that scared me -- and I think most Americans would be scared as well, based on the anti-police movement in the U.S.A. But the thing is, the Spanish people went along with it. There was no blowback like there was in the US. That scared me, too. I think that's from their fascist roots. It got to the point where, if you were walking on the street, people would scream out the window, "get back inside!” Their compliance was weird to me.

“So the next thing that transpired was in Madrid. There were higher rates of COVID in some of the ethnic neighborhoods, which actually happened in New York as well. In Madrid, they used the military to lock down these largely African and Muslim neighborhoods and would only let them leave to go to work — that is, to be the cleaning ladies, nannies, drivers, and doormen for the rich people of Madrid. Otherwise these communities were locked into their neighborhood by military force. For me, as a Jew, that's a World War II ghetto. I don't care if it's a virus, it’s unacceptable.

“You can't lock up an ethnic minority. I was speaking to an Israeli friend who told me Israel also had higher levels of COVID in the Palestinian neighborhoods. And in Israel, they knew, “we can't lock the Muslims in their homes.” In a Jewish nation, that's horrifying. You cannot do that. 

“Spain did it. And I found out about that from the American teachers of color who were all in a chat group together. They were very upset, and they should be. 

“In addition to all these lockdown enforcements, there was strict adherence to mask wearing. You had to wear a mask 100% of the time, period. You were masked on the street, walking by yourself on the beach, hiking alone in the mountains. 

"Granted there's no police hiking in the mountains. So, we took the masks off when we were truly alone. But I will not forget the day I saw a woman in her seventies, she looked like she was in her seventies, walking by herself on the beach. The police stopped her, demanded she put a mask on, and she said, ‘I have severe asthma. I'm afraid.’ I speak Spanish well enough that I could follow their interaction.

“The police demanded that she put her mask on or they would give her a ticket on the spot. And so she put it on and she was crying.

“At that moment, I thought to myself: we cannot have a situation where a 70 year old woman with asthma is forced to do something that's going to hurt her, even when she is not hurting anyone, because ‘that’s the law.’ Where is the humanity?

“I started to realize that once you give police this type of authority, this type of power, aggression is inevitable. 

“When COVID first happened, I got a little nervous because my Spanish is okay for communication, but for understanding the news — my Spanish is not that good. It made me nervous that I couldn’t follow everything that was going on. And I was hearing about weird things happening.

“Two people, Spanish people, that I know — I know this happened to these two people. They weren’t feeling good, they went to the public health center to get COVID tests. The lines were literally three hours long. They checked in, gave their information. Then they went outside to wait on the three hour line. But these people had to go to work. So eventually they had to leave the line and never took the test. Then, they both got calls from the public health center a few days later that they had tested positive for Covid.

“They never took the test. They left the line. So, [I started to wonder]: is Spain now getting money for elevated positives? I don’t know that to be true, but I’m curious. 

“And then it happened to an American teacher in our program. She never even went to get a test. I repeat: She never even went to get a test. And the public health center called her and said, you tested positive for COVID. She was like, “how do you have my number? I never went to the public health center.” 

“When I started hearing these stories I thought, there's something weird here. I just don't know what it is. I was starting to think something was up with the way COVID cases were being tracked and reported. 

“Have you heard of JP Sears? He actually is a friend of mine so I've been following his comedy for a while. During this timeframe, I saw that he did a video on COVID that was censored because he talked about Bill Gates. He got a Facebook slap on the wrist, and a YouTube slap on the wrist -- everybody slapped him. And I thought to myself, “okay, why can't JP speak?”

"This is free speech. And you can disagree with what he's saying, but he's a comedian. He should be able to speak.

“And not just that, I know him. I know he’s a man of integrity. So, when I'm hearing, ‘oh the fact checkers are shutting down dangerous people.’ I’m thinking, ‘no, actually this one is a brilliant healer. And now he's a comedian.” I'm sorry, you can't tell comedians not to speak, not to make jokes.’ 

"Once they censored him, then I was even more interested in hearing what he had  to say, and what some other people were saying, because obviously ‘those in charge’ felt threatened by them.

“JP Sears did an interview with Brian Rose. Brian Rose has a podcast called London Real. And Brian Rose did a podcast with David Icke and David Icke is a British conspiracy theorist. Do I believe everything [David Icke] says? No. But YouTube censored their podcast. They shut the podcast off in the middle of the livestream. And I thought, “no, wait. No, even crazy people should be allowed to speak. I should have the right to turn it on or turn it off.” Access to information, and the ability to assess that information for yourself, is a key element of freedom.

“I became very interested in censored voices. I really wanted to hear everything that David Icke said. And after I heard him speak, I couldn’t un-hear and un-see what he said in terms of how [COVID] enabled massive control by a few over the many. 

“I had seen first hand how the history of fascism in Spain affected people. They had lived with fascism and guess what? Now when the government writes insane laws, people go along with it. They just do. Even if it’s something as inconsequential as a 70 year old woman who is crying because she has to put her mask on because she has asthma. She puts her mask on. 

“I saw that the real beauty of the US is that we don’t accept that. We believe in freedom. The left fully lost me when they became the party of censorship. You can't censor people in the United States. That's just unacceptable.

“Democrats wanted me to believe Trump was a fascist. But real fascists control access to information as a way to manipulate and suppress a population. Living in Spain also showed me the lingering effects of a history of fascism: the way enough fear and control can mute any resistance. I had never experienced anything like that in the US— quite the opposite. And I realized people living in Spain have never experienced anything like our freedom. 

“I lived in the New York bubble, I listened to what the news was telling us about Trump doing all these horrible things. I didn't question enough. I questioned certain things -- things I know, like health and pharmaceuticals. But I just didn't know enough about policy and finance. I figured, if the government is spending money, it's for something we need. I didn't have the vocabulary to even question it. I just didn't know. 

“I watched this video by JP and realized that I had become trans-political. I agreed with the ‘other side’ so much. But I have compassion for everyone who is still asleep in New York because I know that mentality. I hated Trump. I believed he was going to destroy our country. I was there. I have compassion for how your eyes could be closed to what’s really going on.

“COVID opened my eyes. It very much opened my eyes to how anyone can spin any news story to fit any narrative. Now when I read a story, I think that might be true. Or that the exact opposite might be true.”