Trump: Fear and Amnesia

There's a meme circulating online: two cars cross paths on a highway, and the drivers stare at each other, mouths agape in surprise. One car reads: "My grandparents emigrated from Europe to escape poverty and fascism." The other reads: "Me emigrating to Europe to escape poverty and fascism."

I didn't leave my country because of Trump. Not exactly. I left because I was tired of always living on the edge, despite having graduate degrees and a job at a well-known organization in New York. Tired of having to figure out whether my children were sick enough to pay for a doctor's visit or if it was better to wait a few days and hope it would blow over. Tired of living in a country where stability is a luxury and healthcare is a gamble.

Seen from here, from across the Atlantic, everything takes on a clearer shape. In the United States, Trumpism may seem like a political style, a cult of personality, a heavy hand in times of social and economic insecurity. Historically, some people have found this comforting. But from here, where the shadows of fascism still loom over older generations, all this sounds more like an alarm that no one wants to heed.

The memory of the dictatorship—full of disbelief, warnings, and mourning—resonates much louder than I imagined. I notice it not only as an American living outside her country, but also as cleansed by a man for whom resistance was an essential part of his job. Between 1937 and 1939, my grandfather—who fled the dictatorship in Cuba—published a political cartoon every day in a Spanish-language newspaper favorable to the Spanish Republic. The Voice, based in New York. When fascism began to gain ground in Europe, the man believed he could not stand idly by: he enlisted in the US Army to fight it head-on. He recognized fascism when he saw it and decided to stand up to it. Not because it was a comfortable or profitable position, but because he knew exactly what was at stake. Here in Catalonia, I feel closer to him than ever.

In recent months, in the US, reports have emerged of hooded and plainclothes immigration police—agents of a federal agency known as ICE—who, from unmarked vans, kidnap ordinary people from courthouses, their homes, and their cars. In California, Massachusetts, Alabama, Arizona, Virginia, Washington, Texas, Colorado, Connecticut... Without explanations. Without legal guarantees. Simply missing persons. Protesters fill the streets of Los Angeles, and the president deploys thousands of National Guard members there, in a clear challenge to the sovereignty of the state of California. The FBI reduces and handcuffs a Democratic senator to inquire about all this. In Spain, this doesn't seem like a distant or abstract policy. This sounds like history. In recent history. These tactics have a clear objective: to instill fear, to silence, to make it clear that no one is safe.

Living in Catalonia has taught me that collective memory is a civic responsibility. That democracy isn't just about voting. It's also about remembering what can happen to the most vulnerable.

Trumpism doesn't seem like an exception, but a mirror, a consequence. A reflection of having forgotten our own American history: the struggles for civil and labor rights, our complicity with authoritarian regimes abroad, and the slow but steady erosion of democratic norms at home. The system didn't break down with Trump; it was simply unmasked.

The United States may be many things, but it has one particularly keen skill: collective amnesia. And now I believe memory is a form of resilience. It helps us recognize patterns. It reminds us when to rise up, rather than waiting for things to happen on their own. That's why, when Catalans ask me, "But what do you think the Americans are doing?" I don't have a simple answer. But I know why they ask. Because they remember.